Jon Dee Graham

02.01.2008 -- Written by: Linda East Brady

The border country of the American Southwest is harsh, unforgiving. The scarcity of water makes it so. And even when the water finally arrives, it’s doesn’t exactly pat in on little cat’s feet. Raging monsoons scour the land, taking down everything in their path.

But say someone wanted to get lost on purpose? Such a desert storm might be just the ticket — or so singer/songwriter/guitarist Jon Dee Graham ponders at times.

“Be honest — who hasn’t thought of faking their own death and just heading out?” he asked. His song “Swept Away,” is about that very subject. The song gives title to Graham’s new live album, as well as a companion documentary, due to debut at Austin’s SXSW convention in March.

“Sometimes, late at night on the front porch, sitting there and wondering how the hell I am gonna do it, the thought comes of just dropping my wallet in the desert,” Graham admitted. “Lose my cell phone! Go change my name and head south. Teach English in some village, maybe?

“And at that moment, it’ll make sense. But the truth is, it wouldn’t really work that way. Raymond Carver has this story about a guy who is walking down the street when something falls — a piece of masonry or a brick or something — just missing him. He realizes he could have died, and in a flash, he examines his life. He’s, like, an insurance adjuster, is married to a woman he doesn’t love, has three kids he doesn’t even know. So he just walks away and starts a whole new life.

“So ten years pass, and guess what? He is an insurance adjuster, has a new wife he does not love, new kids he doesn’t know — second chance, but same life, all over again. And I can see that happening — hell, it basically did happen to me.”

Graham spent 20-plus years playing guitar for just about everyone: John Doe, Michelle Shocked, Lou Ann Barton, Kelly Willis, and many more. He was also an intrinsic part of the sound of the storied roots-rock band, The True Believers.

After all that, much like Carver’s character, he tried to walk away. He left the glitter of Los Angeles and returned to his home state of Texas in 1996.

“Basically, when I moved back to Austin at the age of 36, I was so tired of playing for other people. I was tired of playing, period. I really, truly tried to hang up my guns. I tried to work in construction for a while.

“But then, what I realized is, what I was tired of is playing other people’s music. If I was to have any peace at all, I had to play my own music. I had a bagful of songs, had written them all along. So, in probably one of the worst career moves ever, I went solo. And here I still am.”

Border music

Graham grew up far from the nightlife that would one day become his natural habitat. He was raised on a big parcel of land in the southwestern part of Texas. 

“Our next nearest neighbor was four miles away,” Graham said, “And the next town of any consequence was a good 30 miles away.”

Though not musicians themselves, Graham said his parents loved old, hard country stuff. They fatefully met at a Bob Wills dance.

“I grew up with a respect of music, and live music, especially, was appreciated in my home. I played piano in church, from the time I was about 8 until I was 12. And when I was 12, I demanded a guitar, and got a Sears Silvertone, or something like it, and started teaching myself. There just was no one else to teach me, out there in the middle of nowhere.

“After 6 months of so, there was a country band from the next town over that needed a bass player, so at 13, I started playing bass in this county band. The talent pool was obviously very limited out there.”

However, there was more than Texas country piquing Graham’s young ears.

“Growing up on the border, I had tons of Latin stuff coming my way. My high school dances were played by these Latin soul bands, playing a mix of Mexican music and Top 40, sung phonetically,” he said.

“Then, San Antonio was 187 miles away, and if the weather was just right, you could get this radio station called KMAC. This was the mid- to late-’70s. They mostly played hard rock. But then, along about 1976, they’d play, like, UFO, and then they followed it with Patti Smith’s version of ‘Gloria.’ Pretty soon they were playing New York Dolls, and Iggy — but still mixed in with UFO and Kiss. They saw no difference between this sort of hard rock and punk rock. So I grew up on this weird blend of styles. It is confusing — but I promise you, it is all there somehow in my music.”

After playing with his own rock band in high school, Graham headed to Austin with plans to attend law school at the University of Texas.

“I made it two semesters, and then joined The Skunks. We were opening up for the Clash and the Ramones. I was hanging out with Joe Strummer,” he chuckled. “Tell me — why the hell would I want to stay in college?”

Tone in the hands

Graham played with the Skunks until 1979, then left to back blues belter Lou Ann Barton, eventually moving on to Los Angeles. He played new wave, roots rock, punk — whatever the job required, Graham had the versatility to deliver.

His playing has both a tough and tender side, and a distinctively fat tone. Whether playing solo acoustic or blasting an electric at full throttle with his band, he serves licks up with plenty of grit, and a splash of honey for sweetness as the material demands.

But unlike his Austin gear-geek stringers buddies, talking feverishly of vintage tube amps, neck woods, and other such musical minutiae, Graham believes tone comes from the handling, not the hardware.

“There will be at least 20 people who will disagree with me, but here it goes. Basically I have had the same guitar for 23 years, and I have had a variety of amps. But I’ve had a sound throughout all that. My belief is that tone comes from within, from the hands.

“Here’s my example — When I lived out in Los Angeles, I was at Westwood Music, looking at guitars. David Lindley walks in. And I’m not gonna bug him, but I am sort of hanging around, just watching.

“So he takes the cheapest fucking guitar right off the rack, and plugs it in to a Peavey Classic — the worst amp on the floor. Well, when he started playing, it’s magic. It sounded too good to be true. And it was! As soon as he left, I took the same guitar down, plugged it into the same amp, and it was horrible,” he laughed. “When I played it, it sounded exactly like the way I thought it would. There are sonic differences, differences in brands — of course.  But tone is about attack, how you hold the strings, how you worry the strings. Tone is in the hands.”

Album and documentary

The Swept Away album and movie occurred together, almost as happenstance. Filmmaker Mark Finkelpearl shot a good deal of performance footage in various venues, including those culled for the album.

“I’m still mystified by it all,” Graham said, laughing. “Mark, he’s a successful producer for the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the Learning Channel. But he’d come to a point like I did at 36, where he wanted to do something of his own ... He’s recently discovered my music, and we started talking back and forth. He was fascinated by the modern troubadour side of things. And one of the things I do, besides the band stuff, is just to drive around the county in a car playing those solo shows. Mark wanted to explore where that music came from. He set out to do a documentary about all kinds of unknown musicians who toil away in obscurity. But that was a big job, because there are a hell of a lot of us. So he narrowed it down to just me and followed me around for a while.”

The documentary is scheduled to officially debut at this year’s SXSW conference. The CD by the same name documents two shows by Graham, recorded by John Harvey and Mary Podio, who’ve worked on Graham’s studio recordings of late.  He appears with his band, the Fighting Cocks — guitarist Mike Hardwick, Andrew Duplantis on bass and John Chipman on drums (drummer Joey Shuffield joins Graham, Duplantis and Graham’s son, Willie, in studio on the album’s closer, a rocker penned by Willie).

The album includes two live sets in Austin in February 2007, one at Mercury Hall, and the other at the stalwart Continental Club — or, as Graham calls it, “My home office, where I’ve been playing since I was 18. I’ve have had people tell me they wanted this forever, this live record. But I’ve hesitated. I mean, how many live records are really good? It is tricky to catch that lightning in a bottle.”

He laughed, adding, “Tom Petty was gonna do one called something like, ‘The Hits, Only Played Faster and Not as Well.’ And the truth is, that is what most live albums are.

“But this one, I am pleased with the results, even proud of it. It’s got lots of rough edges and corners and bumps, but you know what, that is what my shows are like. In places on this record, I think it really captures the kind of crazy excitement to be found — that version of ‘Laredo’ on there is pretty much what it is really like live.”

“Laredo” is a darkly raucous murder tune told from the point of view of a black-hearted doper. The album also contains other Graham favorites, including the mystical rocker, “Airplane,” and “Tie a Knot,” a gritty tale full of vibrato-driven pirate imagery.

On the other end of the affection spectrum, Graham includes the intimate love ballad, “Remain,” dedicated to all musicians’ spouses, and especially to his wife, Gretchen.

Risky business

Despite his past and present concerns about sustaining a solo career, Graham’s love of making his own music resonates as sweetly as his distinct guitar tone.

“You know, I never really pictured myself as this frontman, but here I am,” he said. “And I knew it would be a terribly difficult, heartbreaking process.” He laughed, adding, “See, when you’re somebody else’s guitar player, the responsibility is theirs. All I have to do is I show up and play — no problem, it’s done.

“But putting yourself out front is risky in so many ways. The world is still filled with people who have not heard of me — so trust me, this is not easy, not on my family, and not on me. I am a smart man. I could have picked easier things to do. But the thing is, this is what I want to do, what I was meant to do. I always had the words. I need to use them.”

Author: Linda East Brady